Dr. Larry Gentilello has one remaining lawsuit pending against UT Southwestern, his former employer. A key hearing is set for Sept. 12 in that case.

Dr. Larry Gentilello may never get the chance for a jury to hear his complaints against UT Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Memorial, its teaching hospital. That doesn’t mean he considers his legal efforts a failure.

As I reported in today’s print edition, a federal judge in Dallas has dismissed the trauma surgeon’s federal retaliation claim against UTSW. Judge Ed Kinkeade did so based on certain legal shields state agencies like UTSW enjoy under the law. Kinkeade did not weigh into the facts of the allegations themselves in his ruling, which I uploaded at the end of this post.

Gentilello had alleged that UTSW demoted him as head of its surgical burn, trauma and critical care unit in 2007 after he reported that faculty physicians weren’t properly supervising resident doctors at Parkland, leading to patient harm and fraudulent medical billings. He sought back pay under the retaliation claim.

Given Gentilello’s legal obstacles, an appeal of the judge’s ruling is unlikely, his lawyer told me. I also asked Gentilello for his thoughts.

“Taking on UT Southwestern in this,” he said, “is a David versus Goliath type of task. They simply make the claim to the courts that as an arm of the state, they are immune from lawsuits by citizens.”

1. Parkland’s motion to seal the lawsuit, which named several Parkland executives or UT Southwestern Medical Center doctors who “all received lesser discipline than Akinwande for the same or similar conduct.”